The Secret Lives of T-shirts

Passing secrets through the medium of preshrunk cotton. Here are four garments that don't quite say what they mean.

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You have no idea what's going on. You really, truly don't. I'm sorry to be the person telling you this, but I feel a moral obligation to do so.

We live in a false world. This has been the case since the Golden Age of Hoboes (1924--1969), and it will be true forever. Within the structure of every society, another society exists; there is always a secret coven of insiders who use knowing glances and coded language to rule both the proletariat and the bourgeoisie (often with the consent of the slaves themselves). These are sects like the Bilderberg Group, a fraternity that runs international banking. These are collectives like David Icke's Lizard People, a group of humanoid reptiles that may (or may not) be affiliated with George W. Bush, Kris Kristofferson, and ZOG (Zebra Occupied Government). And these are ordinary citizens who know that images of annoyed snowmen represent the distribution and consumption of South American narcotics.

Young Jeezy (aka Jay L. Jenkins) is a rapper from Georgia who writes motivational lyrics about entrepreneurship. However, Jeezy has achieved almost as much fame for his line of T-shirts, mostly because they have been banned in U. S. high schools. It seems Jeezy's snowman shirts--black T-shirts that feature the unsmiling visage of a rudimentary figure constructed from frozen precipitation--do not promote playful winter frivolity. "This is part of a phenomenon in which parents have no idea what their children are exposed to," says Sue Rusche, president and CEO of the antidrug group National Families in Action. "There is a code that children are aware of, but not parents." Sadly, Rusche's words ring true: 100 percent of teenagers who wear these shirts are addicted to cocaine. Moreover, anyone wearing these shirts can (and will) sell you cocaine, assuming you address them with any of the following coded phrases:

a) "Chatter on the interweb suggests there shall be a little frost on the pumpkin this Halloween."

b) "I own the Eagles box set."

c) "Know what I hate? Eating food."

d) "So, are you the dude wearing the snowman T-shirt who is selling everybody cocaine?"

I can only assume that these are things you did not know. There are myriad cults of subversives who communicate through the medium of preshrunk fabric; in all probability, you walk among them every day. For example, when you see a guy wearing a Buffalo Bills T-shirt, you probably think, That person must be a fan of the Buffalo Bills football franchise. Perhaps he is a native of upstate New York. And if you think that, you are a paralyzed zombie. The only people who wear Buffalo Bills T-shirts are unregistered handgun owners. This is their code. You see, Buffalo Bills legend Jim Kelly began his career in the USFL, which supported a club called the San Antonio Gunslingers--hence the connection to illegal Firearm ownership. I realize this may seem somewhat confusing, as Kelly actually played for the Houston Gamblers. But if these codes were simple, they wouldn't really be codes, now, would they?

Take the popular "Shark vs. Chopper" shirt (page 66, fig. 1) that has become semi-ubiquitous in many of the so-called red states, particularly Idaho and Montana. On the surface, it appears to depict a completely normal event--a great white shark fighting its natural enemy, the military helicopter. But this shirt represents ideologies that are far more radical: The aircraft is a "Black Helicopter." For years, our government has (possibly) been using Black Helicopters to inflict the New World Order. Late in Martin Scorsese's GoodFellas, Ray Liotta sees such crafts while listening to a Harry Nilsson song. People who wear this T-shirt sympathize with the shark, a creature that has not evolved for millions of years. The shark is a vicious eating machine from a bygone era; wearers of this garment are reactionaries who will not shy away from violence when their existence is threatened.

"Shark vs. Chopper" is 100 percent cotton and retails for $15.99.

More complex (and consequently less popular) is the "Shout at the Beatle" T-shirt (fig. 2), which depicts a young Paul McCartney sporting the facial "war paint" that Nikki Sixx of Motley Crue popularized in the glam 1980s. This coded message takes a particularly convoluted path. In 1988, a man named Matthew Trippe sued Mr. Sixx, contending that he (Trippe) had been hired to impersonate Sixx after the CrÃƒÂ¼e bassist was involved in a 1983 motor-vehicle accident. Trippe claimed that he then wrote many of the band's most successful songs but was never compensated; he reportedly dropped his suit in 1993. But proponents of this shirt suggest that this is only half the story. "Shout at the Beatle" wordlessly postulates that Sixx was actually replaced by a forty-one-year-old Paul McCartney. And this was not the McCartney from Let It Be and Wings and "Say Say Say"; this was the real McCartney. This was the McCartney who went into hiding after an orchestrated 1966 car accident that prompted the (now familiar) "Paul is dead" urban myth. After spending seventeen years as a recluse, the "real Paul" (by then strapped for cash) wrote and played bass on all CrÃƒÂ¼e recordings for half a decade. Supporting evidence of this can be found through a) the group's sweeping musical advancement that occurred between 1983's Shout at the Devil and 1985's Theatre of Pain, b) the unprecedented, Beatlesque employment of a piano on the power ballad "Home Sweet Home," and c) the band's decision to cover "Helter Skelter," which can be read as a sly criticism of the "fake Paul," who originally wrote the song as a response to the Kinks' "You Really Got Me."

Ringo Starr and Tommy Lee both declined to be interviewed for this story.

Of course, not all coded T-shirts push conspiracies. The "Sex Rhino" shirt (fig. 3) is less controversial: This is simply a way of telling the world, "Making love with me is like being fucked by a four-ton African herbivore." The shirt--currently popular in western Canada--shows a sexy lady riding a rhinoceros. To the uninformed, it looks like a Tolkien fantasy image in the spirit of Frank Frazetta. But to the indoctrinated, it's a salacious, arrogant expression of one's own sexual prowess. For centuries, the horn of the rhino has been used as an aphrodisiac in parts of rural Asia; today, it plays a similar role in places like Vancouver. As of late, the shirt has even been appropriated by neofeminist teenage women, including the founders of the mildly pornographic Web site Rhinogirls.com.